Keitgas Station
by Ninavask
Summary: Jubae lives aboard possibly the worst mining station in all of New Eden. A haven for refugees of war and those with nowhere else to go, Keitgas is where people find themselves when their dreams have finally died. A station where everyone, even those who don't work the mines, is likely to succumb to the Creeping Cough. Yet a new doctor may just have a cure. NEWC Contestant.


Jubae awoke in the way she had become accustomed. She shot bolt upright in her bed, sheets tangled about her limbs as she began to cough violently into her hands. By the time the heaving finally ceased, she had managed to disentangle herself from the blankets and half stumble, half fall, towards the bathroom door.

Her breathing came in ragged gasps for several minutes as Jubae washed the bloody sputum from her hands in the scalding hot water of the bathroom sink. With the same piping hot water cupped in her hands, she splashed her face and let the shock of heat force the last of the sleep from her groggy mind.

For a moment Jubae's chest began to heave again, and she half expected the coughing fits to resume. But after a moment she spat more phlegm into the sink and breathed out a sigh that rattled around her ribs.

Seeing as she was already in the bathroom, and after that unpleasant wake up she was unlikely to find sleep again anytime soon, Jubae grabbed a still damp towel from yesterday and undressed for a shower. One check of the clock told her she had actually awakened nearly an hour before her alarm. Around fourteen hundred hours standard time, near the end of the first shift, and time enough to make a few stops before work began.

Unlike ninety percent of the population of Keitgas station, Jubae thankfully did not work in the mining or refinery districts. Instead, she worked security for one of the stations six "entertainment" hubs. Facilities owned and operated by station management so their overworked employees could spend what little money they got on alcohol and whatever other desires they might want before their next shift.

It was a policy that kept the miners in line, after fourteen-hour shifts of backbreaking work in the refinery the last thing on anyone's mind was to go to sleep just to wake up and do that again tomorrow. Some went and spent their time in the bars, others went and watched the latest broadcasts of their favorite sporting match.

Others still found more carnal pleasures in the form of seedy brothels whose whores accepted company currency as readily as any real currencies.

In short, Keitgas Mining Station was the kind of shithole that people went when they had nowhere else to go. Just far enough out of high-security space that Federal Security was a bit lax as long as certain taxes were being paid and certain palms consistently well greased. Even better the only traffic that ever reached the station was industrial skiffs taking on or offloading materials. There wasn't even regular shuttle traffic from the station to any of the other similar shithole stations in the system.

Jubae had once heard an old Minmatar who had worked on the station for thirty years describe Keitgas as, "a place where corpses and dead people would go to practice what it means to be dead." And she was not inclined to disagree with him.

Working security in a place like this was much like being the warden over a pack of lobotomites. The few crimes that did regularly occur were minor things easily solved with either a good solid beating or a few sharp words. Depending on whether the involved residents had worked hopper duty that day or not and hadn't gone completely deaf.

As Jubae stepped from the shower she worked a sore shoulder, the scalding heat soaking into her muscles and loosening old aches and pains to new life. She toweled off and dressed in loose-fitting uniform pants and a tank top and an old gray-green jacket that looked as if it had come out the wrong end of a shootout with a particularly angry Amarrian firing squad.

Once she had collected her clothes, Jubae also collected her sidearm. Out of everything that sat in her drab apartment, at least the laser pistol she hefted off the nightstand was in good condition. Meticulously cleaned and cared for, all the lenses properly calibrated and the battery pack charged, the sidearm probably functioned better than anything on the station.

Strapping a holster to her right hip, Jubae thrust the pistol into its housing after running through a quick weapons check. She did not expect to have to use it, but if she had learned anything in her past life it was that you could never trust anything that had been out of your sight for more than a second. Least of all your own firearm.

Jubae stepped from her gloomy apartment into an equally drab and poorly lit access hall. The mechanical sliding door ground shut behind her as she turned and marched down the deserted hallway towards the main thoroughfare.

This entire section had been intended to be maintenance storage. A congestion of small storage rooms that had been retrofitted by station management into habitation modules when the population had grown too crowded in the actual habitation modules. The whole station was like that. A hodgepodge of repurposed machinery and equipment that suffered constant use it was never meant to receive. Hab units whose filtration systems finally went out after decades of negligent repair work became storage units. And storage units whose filtration systems worked at the bare minimum of human safety were pressed into service as multi-family hab units. It was a luxury that Jubae had even a single bed and bath to herself. In some of the mining districts, the showers were community only and all the hot water on station only lasted for the first ten minutes of any of those units running.

The lift ground to a halt and metal bars ground to one side as it opened. Jubae stepped on and slapped the indicator for the 80th deck. The doors slid shut and, with a rumble of hesitation, the lift took off. The overhead light flickering as it rattled along its rails up towards her destination.

Much to Jubae's chagrin, it only made it half the way before the lift began to slow and finally stop somewhere around the sixtieth floor. At first, she thought it had simply failed or lost power and she would need to find another lift when the doors slid open once again and revealed a new passenger. A young brutor woman maybe in her early twenties with bright green braids that hung past her neck and matching green eyes on a face that looked as if it had been smashed several times into a bulkhead. A nose that was too small and too flat too the woman's already flat features peaked out over pouty lips.

Jubae did not recognize the brutor woman, but that meant little and less to her. The woman's eyes lit up like twin warp cores and her mouth opened into a great pearly toothed smile.

"What a pleasant surprise! I didn't think anyone would be about this early!" The woman said with a bubbled voice that barely matched that dark skin and squashed features. The woman stepped onto the lift and went to slap her destination before giggling in a girlish tone.

"And what a coincidence! We're going to the same deck! It must be fate I met you here." The woman declared as she settled in to stand beside Jubae as the doors slid shut.

Jubae for her part only grunted in acknowledgment. Rather then take the sound as a note of apathy, the brutor woman took it as a tone of agreement and giggled as if someone had just given her a puppy to hold.

"So what takes you up to the markets? Looking for a new coat? You could definitely use one. That old thing as seen some damage, just let me tell you." The brutor woman blinked in sudden surprise and gasped aloud as she clapped a hand over her wide open mouth.

"Oh no! I am so sorry, I've been terribly rude. I forgot to introduce myself." The woman offered a hand.

"My names Jaela, but you can call me Jai. All my friends do."

Jubae stared at the woman for a full ten seconds, astonished by the woman's open friendliness. Five years on this station and the general emotional range of the inhabitants that she had discovered came down to three categories. Dead inside, drunk, and suicidally drunk angry man about to get one unit of laser through his skull. Never in those five years had she ever met anyone so… peppy.

It took a moment longer for Jubae to finally reach up and, reluctantly, shake the expectant Jaela's hand.

"I'm Jubae." She said simply.

"Jubae! Oh, that is such a cute name! Is it Caldari? Or… maybe Gallente. I thought you might be Minmatar at first but a name like that? It has to be Gallente. It's all musical and elegant and ooh! Do your friends call you Ju-ju? That would be such a cute nickname. From now on I am going to call you Ju-ju, is that alright?" Jaela said in a torrent that nearly drowned out Jubae's ability to comprehend. Every time the woman opened her mouth it was like a torrent of words just came spilling out as quickly as she could possibly form them.

Worse yet, she didn't even give Jubae a chance to reply.

"I bet it's not that coat you're going to the market for. You look tough, I bet your working security there. I've got an eye for people you know and you definitely look like the security type. With those thick muscles hidden beneath the coat, and that gun! I've never seen a gun up close before! Does it really work or is it just to scare people into not messing with you? I bet it works on everyone. People are so stupid they don't know what to look for when someone starts waving a gun and I-"

"If you don't stop talking for more then five minutes, I will put a hole in your goddamn skull." Jubae snapped and the woman's neverending torrent of words halted. But only long enough for her eyes to widen and then that radiant smile to return as the woman broke into giddy laughter.

"I knew it! I knew it! Tough and ready to shoot! Definitely security for someone. I bet no one messes with you for even a second." Jaela giggled like a little girl and continued to prattle on for the entirety of the ride up to the sixtieth floor. As the lift rattled to a halt Jubae was seriously tempted to pull her pistol and do just as she had said, but instead the moment the doors opened she started to step through the gap.

"Where are you off to? I'll come with you. I know the market so well that I could tell you where just about everything is and I-" Jaela cut off as she tried to pass through the gate but Jubae spun and put a hand between the large woman's breasts.

Jaela was surprised and glanced down at the hand Jubae had planted on her and was about to say something when Jubae twisted her hips and shoved the woman so hard that she stumbled back into the lift. Knocking the woman flat off her feet, her head lulling in stunned surprise.

Before the woman could say another word Jubae had slipped a hand in and slapped a floor at random and then slapped the command to close the doors of the lift and depart immediately. Before it could rattle shut she had slipped back through the threshold just as Jaela's words caught up with her mind.

"Hey what are you doing! That was mean you know and I-" The doors clanked shut and Jubae sighed in relief.

_Finally, that's over. A minute more of that and I just might have shot her for real. How can someone honestly talk so damn much?_ Jubae wondered to herself as she stuck her hands in her coat pockets and strolled along an access hall that for all appearances may as well have been the same one her apartment was in. However, within moments the sounds of a multitude of voices drifted to her ears and the once empty hall was soon packed with people.

The sixtieth deck of the Keitgas station was the "market" level as far as the denizens were concerned. A selection of a dozen warehouses whose mechanical failures had rendered them unusable by station management, but the population of the station themselves had found a use for them. Jubae stepped out onto the market floor into the largest of the dozen and was immediately assaulted with all the scents and sounds of the market.

Of the population of probably 120,000 people, probably a good quarter of that population was located within the market at any given time. That quarter had rendered the conjoined warehouses into a mess of tents and vending stalls. Unused and empty storage crates fashioned into crude structures and shanties. Handmade wares and homemade food vendor's clogged every aisle through the congestion in a nauseating and confusing mixture of sights and smells.

And people clogged the "streets" here. Some just workmen and women just trying to find distractions, and others hawkers trying to sell wares. As Jubae shouldered through the crowd she was hassled by no less than five separate individuals trying to sell her fried shells that stank like a mixture between human sweat and starship coolant.

Each one Jubae waved off or slunk around with practiced agility. Dodging grabbing hands and any attempts to block her way. Passing through the market was an art form that Jubae had learned to master quickly. If she had not she wouldn't have gone ten feet with the jacket still on her back, let alone anything else she might have.

Now however with practiced ease and a healthy unrestrained glare to those who met her eye, she passed through without a problem. Working her way through the warren towards her destination.

Keitgas station had a fully operational and state of the art medical facility. At least that was what station management reported often and loudly. What they actually had was old out of lease cloning equipment and a flock of medical "engineers" who were as likely to diagnose the common cold as a terminal pox as they were to actually even bother to treat you.

The most functional part about the station's medical facilities was just how much money they made off of unwitting workers who bought just about any drug they offered. Jubae had heard them sell pills that were little more than sugar and salt in a capsule to a woman with a cough and a limp so bad, that she had probably coughed herself to death the next day after spending just about all her hard-earned currency on the one packet of pills.

The only reason that any denizen of Keitgas went to this "fully operational" medical facility and that was to get high and hope whatever they took killed them in their sleep. For those who had actual medical issues that needed solving they went to the market. To the many back door doctors that set up shop around the edges of the warehouses. Quack doctors and surgeons who were barely any better than the station's own staff, and yet were more likely to actually treat their patients.

One doctor in particular Jubae had been going to for the last three months since she had found his place. The man himself was about as greasy as it came, but he actually performed functional surgeries and could get his hands on legitimate anti-bacterial and medical essentials that many on the station needed. Including Jubae herself.

Doctor Kind, was what the man called himself, and he would be the first to tell you that no it wasn't his real name. He had been treating Jubae for the last three months and so far Jubae hadn't had any complaints. That was until about a week ago.

The coughing had come and gone for months and wasn't an uncommon thing amongst the denizens of Keitgas. In fact, it had even earned itself a nickname amongst the residents. Creeping Cough. It was a sickness that started with simple coughs and eventually worked its way until you began coughing blood and eventually could no longer breath from fluid filling your lungs.

By all accounts, nearly one-third of all deaths on Keitgas were because of the Creeping Cough. Either directly by causing their lungs to collapse, or indirectly by causing a fit at the worst possible time during someone's shift. Causing an accident.

And the only doctor on the station who was either capable or willing to treat the Creeping Cough was Doctor Kind, who said he knew the source. The simple fact of the matter, to hear him say it, was that the filtration systems on the station were garbage. The very air on shithole station, save for maybe in the administrative wing, was just clean enough to breathe and not choke to death. Yet toxic enough that after enough exposure you were all but guaranteed a painful death as your lung tore themselves apart.

The problem was the man wasn't just giving away treatment, and there wasn't really a cure for the Creeping Cough but clean air and a chance to rest. The former wasn't likely to be found and the latter was a simple impossibility aboard Keitgas, so he did the next best thing.

Doctor Kind was, self admittedly, not an actual medical doctor. Oh, he had learned a thing or two at the university on how to cut someone open and take out things that weren't working, then stitch them back up all the better. But that was something he'd prefer not to try, for both his and his patient's sake he'd say.

No Doctor Kind specialized in a different method of treatment.

As Jubae approached the man's "clinic" the crowds began to thin. Very few had the money to get treated by Doctor Kind, and those that did often found other ways to try and medicate themselves that didn't involve walking into a quack doctor's office.

Situated at one corner of the largest warehouse, Doctor Kind's offices were really a pair of massive storage containers that had been cut into. Nearly forty feet tall, the containers almost reached the ceiling of the warehouse. And each was twice as wide and long as it was tall. Making massive rectangular bricks laid one next to the other, makeshift signs advertising the doctor's treatment's covering them from edge to edge in ugly eye-catching colors.

Yet as dilapidated and broken as the exterior of the containers looked, matching the surroundings of the market perfectly, the inside was almost an entirely different world from the rest of Keitgas.

Jubae stepped through the doors and found herself in an off gray waiting room. Not quite spacious, but certainly not cramped as anywhere else aboard the station. And the lights in here actually appeared to work. Giving off clean white light that made the room stand out in even starker contrast from the rest of the station by just how clean it actually was.

A receptionist sat behind the desk nearby and lifted her head from a terminal she had been noisily clacking at. Dark haired with blue eyes, the woman met Jubae's eyes with a narrowing of the eyes and a suspicious frown.

"This is your third visit this month, Miss Jubae. One would think you're trying to take advantage of us."

"Kella, I'm not in the mood. Where's the Doc?" Jubae snapped, but the receptionist's expression barely flickered. Save for the slightest narrowing of the eyes.

"Coughing blood again?" Kella asked and Jubae gave her a sarcastic scowl.

"Oh no, I just thought I'd come and give the Doctor a big kiss and tell him I'm cured. Yes you dumb bitch, coughing blood. And I have a shift in three hours. I can't exactly do it very well if I double over and die in the middle of my shift can I?" Jubae hadn't meant to be so venomous, but she had not noticed until she had entered the lobby just how much her chest had begun to hurt. Every breath was a sharp pain in her sides and it was all she could do to keep herself from coughing right there.

"Take a seat, Doctor Kind is busy at the moment but he should be able to treat you today," Kella said gesturing to a chair. But before she was done Jubae was already shaking her head.

"Uh-uh. No. I'll cut out the wait time. Give me an empty room and I'll wait there. If I die in the chair waiting for him that's your goddamn f-" Jubae began to cough, even more violently than she had that morning. Pain racked her sides as she bent double and convulsed where she stood. Each cough a bark of pain as ribs compressed and he already pained throat grew scratched and raw.

Jubae wasn't sure how long the fit lasted, but when it was over she found herself seated in front of the desk clutching at her chest. Kella stood over her armed with a clipboard and an expression of disgust.

"It looks like you can't wait. Get on your feet and come along, I'll put you in a room while you wait for the doctor."

"Thank you-" Jubae said and another sharp cough wracked her body, but only one. The sharp coppery taste of blood in Jubae's throat as she slowly forced herself to her feet.

Kella did not wait to see whether Jubae was alright before she started towards a door at the back of the room. A keycard flashed from her pocket and the door slid open silently. The woman strode through the opening and waited on the other side expectantly as Jubae stumbled forward after her.

The receptionist led Jubae down a short warren of clean gray halls until finally finding the room she sought. The keycard flashed again and the door once more slid open on the smooth and silent mechanism, revealing a chamber beyond trussed up like an operating theater. A tall cushioned table sat in the middle of the room with spare counters and equipment strewn throughout in an orderly, way.

"Take a seat on the table, and I will send Doctor Kind for you presently. He is busy with another patient, but once he's done I will send him right this way to see if there is any saving you." Kella said and Jubae flashed the woman a bitter grin.

"Oh there better be a chance of saving me or the first person I'm coming back to haunt is you," Jubae growled before clearing her strained throat and stepped into the operating room. Kella did not say a word and the door slid shut silently behind Jubae.

Obediently Jubae seated herself on the edge of the operating table and tossed her jacket aside. The act agitated her chest and another fit of coughing struck her, this one not so severe as the other but enough to leave bloody phlegm in the palm of her hand.

Jubae was not sure how soon she had expected Doctor Kind to show himself, but what she did know by about her fifth coughing spell was that she was waiting too damn long. As she rose from the floor, where she had falling clutching her chest and convulsing as the coughing shook her body, she began cursing loudly.

"Where are you, you stupid fucking bastard! I'm dying over here!" Jubae screamed as she forced herself to her feet and stumbled towards the door. It did not slide open when she approached and even when she slapped the pad beside the door all it did was emit a beep.

Jubae slammed a fist against the metal of the door, and barely noticed the throbbing pain in her knuckles when she threw another and another.

"Open!" Jubae shouted at the door before she began to cough again. Jubae dropped to her knees as her whole body shook and she blindly scratched at the door.

_I'm… locked in. That stupid bitch… she's leaving me here to die. I can't- I can't die like this…_ Jubae managed to force the coughing fit down just enough to slam both fists against the door. She pounded on the door futily and screamed at it until she fell back coughing once more. Her throat raw and pained and blood spilling from her mouth with each cough.

Jubae was still coughing when the door slid open and Doctor Kind finally showed his face. Short and stocky with dark brown hair slicked back to his head and bright green eyes, the man looked less like a doctor and more like a shifty hover-vehicle salesman. When he saw Jubae coughing on the floor, droplets of blood splattering across the metal bulkhead, he frowned the way one might frown when they misplaced their keys.

"My, you are far along aren't you?" The Doctor announced as Jubae raised her eyes to meet his. She spat bloody phlegm at the hem of his coat and the Doctor's eyes glanced down at the damp spot on his coat, and then back at Jubae.

"Well, no sense letting you die there. Come along, get up." Doctor Kind said and Jubae felt firm hands grab her under the arms and half lifted, half dragged, her to her feet and back towards the padded table. Jubae pulled free from his grasp halfway across the room, but almost immediately began coughing again as the Doctor ushered her to the table.

"There there, deep breaths. My but you are far along, just from the sound of it I would say your lungs are starting to collapse." Doctor Kind said.

"What was... your first… fucking clue." Jubae wheezed between sharp gasps for air as the Doctor busied himself attaching monitors to her arms and neck and chest.

"Now now, no need for attitude miss Jubae. You're not my only patient after all. Why just before you a lovely young woman arrived in need of serious assistance. Not quite as far along as you are but close enough that it warranted some extreme measures.

"Extreme..?" Jubae started but a cough cut her off.

"Now now, don't you worry about that. Just lie back and breath deeply." Doctor Kind instructed as he adjusted the operating table to support Jubae's back and feet while he collected a gray triangular canister that had been tucked into a corner of the room. As Jubae laid back she watched the Doctor out of the corner of her eye as he began to attach a breathing apparatus to a long thick plastic tube attached to the canister.

"What's… that?" Jubae wheezed and the Doctor glanced at her and smiled faintly as he tapped the canister.

"Medicine. Your condition has reached a very critical state. Your coughing has started to rip apart your very lungs and they are convulsing every time you breathe. Usually we use antibiotics to clear out your issue, but clearly, that is no longer a viable option. So I will have you ingest this and it will work to repair your damage." Doctor Kind explained as he set the canister beside the table Jubae rested on and offered her the breathing mask while he busied himself at a nearby terminal.

Jubae watched as her vitals appeared on the terminal and the Doctor turned to her and gestured towards the mask.

"Go ahead and put that on, you will be able to breathe normally." Doctor Kind said and, reluctantly, Jubae complied. Pulling the small elastic straps over her ears she made sure the mask was tight to her face and took a shaky deep breath. Air whistled as it worked its way through the mask's filters, but she could indeed still breath.

"Now just lie back and rest while I get everything ready." Doctor Kind said as he bent to the terminal and tapped away. But Jubae could hardly just lie back and wait, and instead watched the man work. Doctor Kind was an oily looking man who always appeared as if he were up to something, and today was no different. Yet he had never done anything before that seemed out of place. In fact, compared to some of the other quacks on Keitgas, he seemed positively responsible.

It was as Jubae was watching the man that a loud thump from the hall outside caught her attention and she lifted her eyes towards the door. With no window however she had no chance to see if anyone was out there. Jubae looked to the Doctor, who himself was also staring at the closed and locked door with a furrowed brow.

"Let me go check on that, Miss Jubae. I will be back presently to see how your treatment is going. Just lie back and breath deeply." Doctor Kind said as he tapped a key on the terminal and the canister beside Jubae's table began to rattle with the sound of a small motor working.

Doctor Kind stepped away from the terminal and made his way towards the door as Jubae took a deep breath from the mask. The filters had closed and the air that came from the tube tasted metallic but was still comfortable to breathe. She felt the slightly cool air fill her lungs and for a moment felt a bit of relief as the itching pain between her ribs faded.

It was once the Doctor had closed the door that something changed. As Jubae inhaled the coldness in her mouth and chest from her breathing took on a strange sharpness, and suddenly she gagged as if something had struck the back of her throat. Jubae shifted her gaze down and found the clear plastic tube that ran from the canister to her mouth to be almost black with a fluid… something moving through it. The something just about having reached her mouth.

With a shout of disgust, Jubae reached up and wrenched the mask from her mouth and cast it aside. Watching as a black fluid spurted from the mask and splattered across the floor, surging forward out of the mask like a black ichor. Oozing out across the bulkhead in a constant flow.

Nausea filled Jubae and she spat, hoping none of the black fluid had gotten into her mouth. Everything still tasted and smelled metallic, even as Jubae sucked in the unfiltered station air.

"What the actual fuck was that?!" Jubae shouted as she spat. Bits of black residue mixed with her saliva and she wiped at her face to find more of it around her mouth. Gagging she rushed towards the sink in the corner of the room and ran scalding hot water into the sink. Splashing her mouth and face in the hot water to wash out the taste and sent. Even after spitting out the water there was still a coppery taste to her mouth, and her tongue felt swollen.

_What the fuck was that motherfucker about to dope me with?!_ Jubae wondered as she wiped her mouth and snatched her coat from where she had left it. Whatever it was she had no intention of staying and finding out.

Jubae was halfway to the door, wondering how she would get it open when it slid open obediently before her. Doctor Kind was just walking in when his eyes met hers and widened in surprise.

"Miss Jubae? You should be lying down and taking the treatment, where are you-?"

"Shut up and let me out of here." Jubae hissed, interrupting the man as she drew her laser pistol and planted the emitter firmly in the center of the man's chest. Doctor Kind blinked and glanced down at the firearm, clearly stunned to see it there as he had not even realized she had drawn it. Jubae herself was equally surprised to see it, the pistol held firmly in her hand with her finger pressed to the trigger.

"Now now, take it easy. You are free to go whenever you like, Miss Jubae. No one is keeping you here against your will, but I would recommend you sit back down and continue-"

"I am getting out of here, now! Fuck your treatment you sick fuck. What were you trying to pump me full of? Toxic waste? No way." Jubae said, and the edge in her voice surprised her. She couldn't recall ever sounding so scared in her life.

"It is just medicine, ma'am. The only medicine that will make you feel better. That's all and I-" Doctor Kind once more was cut off, but this time by his own widening stare. His eyes had taken in the room behind Jubae and had locked firmly on the ever-expanding black puddle of sludge coming from the canister.

"No! You are wasting it you stupid- How could you waste something so precious! Move aside or I'll-" This time the interruption was the sound of the laser pistol discharging into Doctor Kind's chest as he grabbed for Jubae's arm. She depressed the trigger once, and then a second time as the man's weight started to come forward. Eyes already bulging the doctor's eyes grew to the size of saucer's then and stared back at Jubae in shocked disbelief.

He made no sound as he crumbled and fell to the floor, dead before his head had even found the bulkhead. Two smoking holes square in the center of his chest, with a pair of matching holes in the door beyond where the lasers had penetrated the metal.

Jubae rounded her firearm on the Doctor's corpse and stared, looking from the corpse to the pistol in her hand and back. It took a moment for her to comprehend what had just happened, and a moment longer for her to realize just how loud the pistol shot had likely been. It was time to get out of this place. Now.

Jubae scrambled for the door but found it locked, it had sealed itself after the Doctor had stepped through and would not respond to her attempts to open it. After a moment's thought Jubae spun to the doctor's corpse and rolled him over, searching his pockets she found his keycard as well as a handheld data storage unit. She pocketed the later, she would need some kind of evidence as to what the man was doing wrong if she was ever going to explain this to station security if station security even bothered to look into the death. For the keycard, she slapped it against the reader beside the door and sighed in relief when the door obediently slid open for her.

That relief died in Jubae's throat as she came face to face with Jaela. The dark-skinned woman with the smashed in face smiled that brilliant pearly smile, but then her eyes drifted past Jubae and found the Doctor's corpse and her expression changed to that of a disappointed frown.

"Oh… you shot him. Well, that wasn't very n-" The heel of Jubae's hand took the woman right under the jaw and sent her stumbling back. Followed by a swift kick to the woman's ribs when she tried to right herself that slammed Jaela against the opposite bulkhead and knocked her feet out from under her.

Coat in hand Jubae didn't wait to see whether the woman even got up as she turned and ran down the hall at a breakneck pace. There was not time to try and parse why that woman of all people was here, nor why she had been outside the door to the operating room. All she had time, for now, was to find an escape and quick.

It didn't take long for Jubae to realize she had in fact gone the opposite direction from the main entrance, but when she turned and was about to retrace her steps down the hall she had come down she heard shouting men and women and the tramping of boots.

Apparently, the Doctor did have a security team tucked somewhere out of sight, and the commotion had not escaped their notice.

"Fuck!" Jubae shouted before she spun and ran further down the hall. She came to a junction and took an immediate right and found herself mounting a set of stairs to another level. She took a left then and another right and then another left down a warren of almost identical hallways. All clean and gray and well lit, each door marked and labeled in ever increasing numbers being the only thing to tell Jubae that she was getting anywhere at all.

As she ran the sounds of shouting faded and Jubae finally slowed her dead sprint to a cautious walk. Pistol held in one hand and jacket still held in the other. She came to another junction and halted as she glanced down each direction. Three identical halls to the one she had just come down, each ending in a dead end.

Cursing Jubae picked one at random and jogged down it, hoping to find another hallway that branched off, but no luck. Just a dead end hall with a dozen locked doors to either side.

As the bootsteps tramped somewhere down the halls behind her Jubae remembered the doctor's keycard in her hand with her jacket, and she swiped it over one of the access panels. For a moment that felt like an eternity the door held still, but finally, the keypad beeped and the door slid aside with an almost silent hiss and Jubae threw herself through the opening. The door slid shut behind her and Jubae pressed herself to the wall just beside it. Dropping her jacket and holding her laser pistol in both hands.

The sound of bootsteps grew louder outside until it was clear the owners were just outside. Through the metal, Jubae could just make out the sounds of conversation, but not the words and she readied the pistol and leveled it for the door. Ready to open fire the moment the door opened.

Once more a mere moment stretched into eternity and the sounds of conversation continued beyond the threshold when suddenly the sound of bootsteps continued Jubae was certain they were approaching her very door. Only as the sound continued she realized it was growing fainter, not louder.

Jubae waited until the sounds beyond the door had faded completely away before she collapsed to her knees, releasing the breath she had not even realized she was holding.

Then Jubae began to cough.

The first cough was a simple tickle at the back of her throat, but it grew and grew until she had pressed her forehead to the floor, the pistol in her hand forgotten as she convulsed and coughed into the cold floor. By the time the cough faded she half expected the security troops to have returned, to be waiting there for her in the doorway with rifles ready.

Yet when Jubae raised her head she found the door was still not opened, and no sounds drifted through it that indicated the security team had ever returned.

Wiping the blood from her mouth with the back of her hand, Jubae sighed with relief once more. This time she crushed the tickle at the back of her throat and was able to keep the cough from returning.

I need… to find a way out. Find another doctor. See if they can help me. I don't know what kinda scam these guys are running but… I can't stay here. Jubae thought as she took in her surroundings for the first time. The lights in the room had turned on automatically when she had entered, but she had been too focused on the pursuit to even bother to look around.

She almost wished she hadn't even bothered to look. Cool air filled the room, far too cool for comfort and it was clear the room was intended for storage. However, it had the same sterile look to it as the rest of the facility had. In one corner of the room easily a dozen crates lay unopened, save for one where several of the strange triangular canisters sat beside the opened crate. And beyond that, an entire section of the room was cordoned off by semi-transparent sheets of plastic curtains on rollers. Jubae's eyes would have just passed over that separate section if her eyes hadn't caught the familiar black plastic of Federally issued body bags.

Slowly Jubae got to her feet. Her eyes locked on the shapeless black bags piled together in the far side of the room. Dozens of them lay piled together in disorganized groups as if someone had just cast them aside the moment they had found a spot for them.

Curious, Jubae began to step forward when her foot found her laser pistol. She bent and scooped up the firearm and as she did the sound of something heavy falling to the floor caused her to jump and raise her firearm towards the dark shapes.

Yet when she looked Jubae could not see anything out of place, and despite the warnings screaming in the back of her head she took a step forward. This would be more than enough evidence to get even station security to shut this place down. If these were victims of whatever the Doctor was actually up to, then there was a chance this discovery would help absolve her from any murder accusations.

Carefully, Jubae stepped past the curtains and felt her stomach twist as her eyes took in just how many of the body bags were there. Nearly a hundred dark shapes lay piled one on top of the other, some still on the gurneys that had brought them in. In one corner the pile made its way nearly to the ceiling nearly three meters above Jubae's own head.

_Just how many patients did Doctor Kind kill rather than treat? Did he intend to stick me here after-_ Jubae nearly jumped out of her skin when one of the bags began to move. A sudden frantic from one of the bags caused those around it to shift and bang to the floor. The heavy thud of the body bags striking the floor told Jubae what the source of the sound had been. Yet that was not the only sound this time. A wordless moan seemed to escape the bag and Jubae's eyes rose as an even darker realization came to mind.

The people in these bags weren't dead.

The soft moan came from the bag and Jubae lurched forward, pushing other bags off the frantic shape as she knelt beside it.

"Stop moving! Stop moving, I'm here. I'll get you out." She said and for a moment all sound ceased and the frantic movements ceased from the box. Jubae found the zipper that held the bag shut and drew it down in a rush.

"You're safe now, I'll get you out of here. You're safe-" A hand reached out from the bag and grabbed Jubae by the wrist as she spoke. In the clean white light from the overhead lamps, the skeletal gray-skinned hand stood out in stark contrast as boney fingers wound about her wrist.

And soft blinking orange lights marking joints and onboard system status' were clearly visible through all but translucent skin.

Jubae's eyes traced the arm back into the bag and an equally skeletal face peered up at her. A face that had clearly once been human but now only looked like a pale imitation of a human face. Where the eyes should have been a pair of sensor lenses peered up from the bag, and the skeletal face showed signs of light just beneath the surface. Veins stood out on the things features like black cables running just beneath the skin.

The thing in the bag had once been a woman, withered breasts and the vaguest hint of feminine shape to the body told as much. But it was clearly no longer even human at this point.

Jubae stared down at the thing, her heart thudding in her ears as its fingers dug into her wrist. Its jaws opened and it began to moan again, a soft pitiful sound that sent chills up Jubae's spine as she stared down into those blank sensors and blinking orange lights that adorned its face.

All at once the thing holding onto Jubae's wrist started to pull her closer as it lifted its head. As if it were trying to draw her close to whisper something in her ear. Jubae did not give it a chance as she pressed the barrel of her laser pistol into the side of the things head and depressed the trigger. Once, twice, three times, and so on. Until all that remained of the once human's head was a smoking sparking mass of burned flesh and molten circuits.

Jubae only stopped firing when the pistol beeped and clicked to announce it had overheated and would need a moment to cool off. It clicked twice more as Jubae tried to fire it, but the thing in the bag had already fallen and lay still in the bag once more. The lights along its body flickering on and off as it powered down. It's hand however remained firmly latched to Jubae's wrist and it took bashing the fingers against the bulkhead for the grip to finally loosen enough that Jubae could shake her hand free.

Slowly, her overheated pistol still trained on the cybernetic abomination in the bag, Jubae got to her feet and backed up towards the door. Horror melted together with fury as her mind tried to race through what she had just seen. Clearly Doctor Kind had been doing some kind of experiments on the people here. Some kind of disgusting augmentations that turned people into cybernetic monsters and these were the rejects. These were the leftovers who hadn't been able to survive the change.

Before Jubae could finish her thought she heard a beep of a keypad reading a keycard and the soft hiss of the room's door. She spun and leveled the overheated pistol on the door, but for all it mattered she may as well have just thrown up her hands. There was a burp of small arms fire and pain exploded in the right side of Jubae's chest. She screamed as her feet crumpled beneath her, and Jubae watched the world explode into black and white flecks as her head bounced on the bulkhead beneath.

Jubae was only vaguely aware of the sounds that followed. Bootsteps on the bulkhead, the sounds of helmeted security personnel speaking over her. The sounds of two other unfiltered voices.

The words finally drifted to her as if across a great sea.

"I told you to disable her, not kill her." A man's voice said.

"She moved too suddenly, I could not calibrate for it in time." A woman's voice came.

"Your targeting systems will need to be calibrated then. We can't lose a valuable test subject like this. I will see to it once we've begun the operation again." Came the man's voice, and Jubae was certain he was right above her.

Slowly the world began to make more sense and the black flecks faded from Jubae's vision as she was rolled onto her back. Pain exploded from her right side and she would have screamed if she hadn't already begun to cough. Heavy globs of hot blood splattered across her face as she coughed, and the taste of the blood gagged her as her eyes opened and she wheezed weekly.

Doctor Kind's bright green eyes met Jubae's, and he smiled that oily smile he always gave her when she asked a question.

"Miss Jubae, you gave us quite a scare there. Try not to move, your lungs have collapsed. We will get that fixed in just a moment." The Doctor's said and then he turned and spoke to someone else.

"Bring me a nanite canister. Anyone, it does not matter. Thank you kindly, dear." The Doctor reached over and held a triangular canister about as long as his forearm, and was already affixing a plastic tube to a breathing mask he produced from his coat.

Jubae's eyes drifted and she found the twin burned holes in the center of the man's chest. Orange light flickered there through his lab coat, and though most of it was scoured and burned away Jubae could just make out circuitry twisted and burned in the wounds.

"How?" Jubae wheezed and the Doctor smiled down at her.

"Don't you worry about the how," he said misunderstanding her questions, "you just worry about relaxing right there for me as we make you all better. Miss Jaela, can I have you hold her legs for me?"

"Yes, Doctor." Came the woman's voice and Jubae tilted her head just enough to catch sight of the dark-skinned brutor woman with green hair as she stepped into view and knelt down at her legs. She didn't even feel it when the woman put her hands on her ankles and pressed.

"I've got her, doctor." The brutor woman said, flashing Jubae that dazzling smile as she held her firmly.

"Excellent, and… you! Hold her head back. She will likely begin seizing once the operation begins." Doctor Kind said as he affixed the breathing mask to Jubae's face. She began to cough again, blood splattering the inside of the mask even as the cold metallic scent from before filled her nostrils.

At first, Jubae thought the man had been speaking to one of the security guards, but when Jubae felt pressure on her forehead her eyes drifted up to find the headless shape of the cybernetic thing she had found in the bag looming over her. Orange lights twinkled across it's naked and desiccated body, and Jubae tried to scream only for her mouth to fill with a cold metal tasting fluid.

"Just relax, Miss Jubae. It will all be over shortly. You will be healed and happy and your former life will be over. Just relax." Doctor Kind said, his voice oddly pleasant as he tried to shush her.

Jubae tried to thrash against their hold. What little energy she had gone into tossing her feet against the woman who held her, and she tried to use her free hand to grab for the mask but the Doctor had a firm hand on her arm. She felt as week as a kitten as she choked and gagged on the fluid forcing its way into her mouth and nostrils.

Then, all at once, the fight went out of Jubae and the world went dark. The last sound she heard was the Doctor's soft soothing voice whispering to her across a great distance.

"Welcome to immortality, Miss Jubae."


End file.
